1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is broadly concerned with a greatly improved skirting assembly designed to be installed beneath elevated buildings such as mobile homes and the like in order to cover the normal space beneath such buildings and to present an aesthetically pleasing, structurally sound, blowout-resistant covering skirt. More particularly, it is concerned with such a skirting assembly which can be efficiently manufactured by provision of specialized connection structure for coupling the skirt to the building while permitting relatively unrestricted up and down reciprocal travel thereof, along with an upper channel-like cover disposed over the upper marginal edge of the skirt and free of any connection to the building itself. In this manner, the skirting assembly can accommodate any degree of skirt movement resulting from frost heave or movement of the underlying earth, while avoiding the necessity of providing an upper covering skirt affixed to the building which in turn necessitates that a relatively large cover be provided so as to accommodate all normal degrees of skirt panel shifting.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Elevated buildings, such as mobile homes, are somewhat universally provided with circumscribing skirts for closing the space beneath the building, the advantages emanating from the use of such skirting being well known. In the interests of simplicity, savings and expense and ease of installation, it is commonplace to construct the skirting by use of a continuous series of relatively light weight, yet strong synthetic resin panels releasably interconnected at their adjacent upright edges by various types of interlocks. Moreover, it is very common to provide decorative upper and lower marginal covers for the skirting system. Normally, the lower cover is in the form of a channel member which receives the lowermost marginal edge of the skirt, and is staked to the ground.
On the other hand, the upper elongated skirt covers have without known exception been affixed directly to the building by appropriate connectors. In order to accommodate normal up and down reciprocal travel of the skirt by virtue of frost heaving or settling, such upper covers are typically provided with a relatively long vertical space therewithin for accommodating skirt panel travel. In this regard, in order to assure that all normal shifting of the skirting panels can be accommodated without damage to the upper covers, it has been the practice to construct the channels with the ample shifting space described above; in short, the practice has been to design these covers on a "worst case" basis in order to safely accommodate all degrees of skirt panel shifting. While this practice is common, it inherently wastes material and increases the cost of the overall skirting assembly. That is to say, in climates where frost heaving is of minimal significance, it necessarily follows that less space is required in the upper channel member to accommodate shifting; yet, in order to assure uniformity, manufacturers have generally used only one size of upper cover member for their skirting assemblies, notwithstanding the fact that in many instances this constitutes a relatively costly expedient.
Prior skirting systems for mobile homes and the like are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,710,525, 2,988,380, 4,107,888, 3,113,357, 4,214,412, 3,382,813, 4,043,088, and in Canadian patent No. 1,022,719. In addition, prior skirting assembly is described in copending application Ser. No. 06/255,302, filed April 17, 1981, now Patent No. 4,400,919.